THE FUTURE: FEBRUARY 5 – 2015 – MADISON VALLEY
It was only yesterday morning that Ben was running for his life in this very neighborhood. Heh. "Running for his life." Ironic. Back then, a pissed-off Dexter was the biggest of his concerns. And yet now, with actual mortal peril all around him, he was walking at a normal pace, for he had nowhere to hurry to anymore.
Ben looked around. Besides a couple Cyber Stingers somewhere far off, there weren't any fusion monsters in his vicinity. Why would there be? This area was completely deserted, and there wasn't anything left for Fuse to conquer anymore. So, he kept marching on, moving along the path he had walked a thousand times as a kid.
But now, it was all different. The skies were a nauseating shade of green. Even though he had gotten used to it, the air had gotten harder to breathe. And above all, the hideous patchwork planet in the sky was looming over him. Him. Not even over the city or the Earth – at that moment, Ben felt like it was looking at him specifically. Though, he kept marching on in spite of it.
All around him, Wyatt Street was completely different. The buildings were covered with fusion roots and terrafusers, convulsing and constricting. Most of the structures were damaged or destroyed. And seeing it completely empty felt uncanny or disturbing – like walking through a liminal space. It was like this was a Fusion version of the entire town – transmuted and corrupted beyond recognition. Ben noticed a house where a firefight had clearly taken place, as evidenced by the raygun blast imprints left in the walls.
The road ahead of him was now blocked by a pool of fusion matter so wide that some of the houses had partially sunk in it, so now he had to make a turn and take the longer way around. He could have gone through the backyards of the intact houses, but that felt weird. Even if they're abandoned, it still felt like trespassing.
From then on, the road was rockier. The ground was uneven, as if aerated with bubbles underneath, creating elevations and chasms, causing cracks in the asphalt. Patches of fusion matter were all over the place. Some of the homes were partially elevated and tilted in all the different directions.
For a moment, Ben stopped and looked back. The massive figure of the KND treehouse was visible behind him, though now slanted to the side. He hadn't told them that he was going out. Mandark was adamant about not letting Ben put himself in danger by going on missions, having just sent Rex and Bobo instead of him not an hour ago, leaving Ben with nothing to do but sulk around. He knew Mandark would have disapproved of him going out like this, as all the hopes were riding on him, but he wasn't going on a dangerous mission. It was a personal matter.
After barely managing to step over an especially wide fusion matter puddle, he made another turn to McDuffie Drive. He had hoped that by now, he'd have gotten used to seeing his hometown like this, but this childhood nostalgia was coming on strong and this corrupted version of it was sickening. Wasn't this the same street Grandpa Max had taught him to ride a bike on? Wasn't this where he'd make a run for it, trying to escape Cash and J.T., back when they were kids? Ben wondered what could have happened to those two in the past eight months. Probably the same thing that happened to everyone else.
Finally, he had arrived. He could see his childhood home ahead of him. Even though he wanted to do this, it was getting harder with each step, like trying to make the same magnetic charges meet. His parents' house looked no different than the others – in that it was also covered with terrafuser roots and nearly in ruins. The garage had collapsed altogether. There was a bulbous sac of fusion matter right outside his very own bedroom window, another had a tight grip around the front wall with its roots – so tight that it had seeped deep into the structure, forming wide cracks all around. Was the building even safe to enter? Another good reason for Ben to stop and turn around, and he was seriously considering it, but at the end of the day, he knew he was kidding himself – this was something he had to go through.
Ben instinctually reached into his pocket for house keys… only to realize he had forgotten them when he rushed out of the house in a hurry yesterday, or last year, or whatever way you want to look at it. He hadn't expected the house to be empty when he got back.
So, he had to find a way in from the back. As he stepped over the unkempt lawn (which was actually supposed to be his chore), an alternative entrance presented itself. The entire back wall had totally collapsed, exposing the rest of the interior. His body was nearly paralyzed at the shock of seeing it – it was all true.
Well, of course, it would all be true. What else should he have expected when he saw the state of the rest of the neighborhood? What reason did he have to doubt what Number Five told him about his parents? And yet, for some reason, he had decided that he had to come all this way and see all this for himself. This wild fantasy that he'd step back into his house like nothing happened, Sandra would serve him meatloaf and maybe ask about his adventures, and Ben would play down the more dangerous aspects so as not to have her worry too much. And maybe, just maybe, he'd wake up the next morning and realize that the time travel experiment, the apocalypse and Planet Fusion were nothing more than a nightmare that had stretched itself for too long. But no, deep down, Ben knew this was nonsense, and he even felt sick playing out this fantasy in his mind. His parents were gone.
Hell, as far as he knew, he was the last remaining Tennyson.
Sandra, on month 5 of the invasion, had gotten fusion matter poisoning. Ben saw its effects first-hand last night when it claimed Hoagie, almost all the way. Back then, though, the vials of Imaginary Energy, bottled and ready for medical use, weren't a thing yet, and even though Sandra was rushed to the hospital immediately, she didn't make it. Carl, having lost his son and now his wife, had been struck by grief and went missing shortly afterwards, and though nobody knew what happened to him, it was clear that he would not be coming back.
Number Five didn't want to tell all this to Ben. And Ben didn't want to hear any of hit either. He didn't want to, he had to. And that… brought him here. That which remained of his childhood home. The interior was just like it had been on the outside – the terrafuser roots found their way in through holes, cracks and crevices in the walls, they were coming out from under the floor panels, not to mention the collapsed wall in the back. There was a puddle of Fusion Matter near the collapsed wall, with debris still floating in it.
Ben went over to the wall they had hung all their picture frames on. It was him and his parents, back when he was only 5 and a half years old, going to Ben's very first Sumo Slammers movie. Even though he was only a toddler back then, he still had vague memories of that day. And memories were all that he had left now.
He recalled all the other times he'd gone through a major loss. When he thought he'd lost Gwen while looking for the creator of the Omnitrix… that was the first one. The first one would always hit the hardest, since it was before he had been truly "broken in" as a hero. Or so he had thought.
There was the time he had lost Feedback because of his recklessness. Though, looking at it with hindsight, losing Feedback was a joke compared to everything else. It was his absolute favorite transformation, sure, but it spoiled him. It broke his world when Feedback was disintegrated right before his eyes, but compared to losing your family members, that's like losing a favorite toy.
After that, it was Kevin's turn. Though, Kevin returned alive and well, and slowly Ben started to notice that none of them truly get hurt. Though, now, with his parents, that was a whole other thing. Sure, he would be averting this future (hopefully), but his parents were gone. No, not gone. No use sugarcoating this. His parents were dead. And this is just his parents, he didn't know what happened to Grandpa Max or Kevin or anyone else because he was too scared of hearing the answer.
And heck, Julie! Whatever happened to Julie over this time? The last conversation didn't end on a good note between them, which was mostly Ben's fault. That was right before Julie went to compete in France. Whatever happened to her, Ben regretted that her last memory of him would turn out to be of that argument.
Everyone else, everyone that actually had to stay and fight for these eight months, they all lost their friends and loved ones one by one. Death by a thousand cuts. But having skipped these events, Ben had to take it in all at once, which was highly overwhelming. He wasn't sure which of these were worse. Though he couldn't judge, as he felt like he still hadn't fully processed all of this. And there was one more thing that set him apart from everyone else's tragedies – hope. He had the opportunity to get back to the past and fix every single one of these events. He knew there were other possible futures, brighter and better than anything he could imagine, ones worth fighting for. And it was his responsibility to deliver the Earth from Fuse's wasteland.
He felt a sudden surge of determination as he looked around. What was he even doing here? He'd go back to Sector V and demand a mission from Mandark first thing in the morning to help save the Earth, for he could sit idly by no longer. Before arriving, he had been intending on exploring every room of what remained of the Tennyson residence to reminisce and reflect, but there was no more point on dwelling on what happened in this future. He left the building and marched back towards Sector V. It was time for the last Tennyson to make his own future.
DEVELOPER'S JOURNAL - One-shot: Memories of Future Past
For a series involving so many CN characters, it's pretty weird that I decided to utilize one and only one specifically, but this was genuinely a really interesting idea that I wanted to write. Plus, a reason for this fanfic exchange was to expand on some plot threads or ideas that felt underutilized in the main story, and considering the fact that Ben is the time traveler in this universe instead of a random OC, who has an established relationship with his parents (and considering that Sector V is already in Bellwood in E1 lmao) this was the perfect opportunity for me. Because otherwise, I was kinda at a loss for ideas, as I didn't want to deviate from E1 canon. And this was genuinely one of the most fun works to write. Stories set in Fusionfall's Future have always been a big interest for me, and even though I haven't written any works in that corner of my universe, I'm hoping for an opportunity to come soon.